If you liked
Books like How the Mind Works
Loved How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from psychology, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.
Psychology writing that earns its place is scientifically grounded and genuinely illuminating about how people actually think, feel and behave. This list spans 1946–2014 and includes 4 marked as essential reading in psychology.
10 books · ranked
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1
Flow
The psychologist who coined the concept of 'flow' — the state of complete immersion in a challenging activity — presents his research on optimal experience and argues that happiness comes not from leisure but from deep engagement with work and activity that stretches our abilities.
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2
Thinking, Fast and Slow
How the mind's two systems lead us into predictable errors; the definitive popular book on cognitive bias.
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3
The Body Keeps the Score
How trauma lives in the body and how people heal; a landmark that reached far beyond therapists.
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4
Man's Search for Meaning
A psychiatrist's survival of the camps and the meaning he drew from it; brief, profound and enduring.
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5
Nonviolent Communication
An enlighting look at how peaceful communication can create compassionate connections with family, friends, and other acquaintances, this book uses stories, examples, and sample dialogues to provide s
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6
A cognitive psychology of mass communication
"With this third edition of A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication, Richard Jackson Harris continues his examination of mass media's influences on our perceptions of ourselves and the world arou
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7
Cognitive psychology
Revisiting the Classic Studies is a series of texts that introduces readers to the studies in psychology that changed the way we think about core topics in the discipline today. It provokes students t
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8
Consciousness
Consciousness', 'the last great mystery for science', remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could co
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9
Mindset
Why believing abilities can grow changes everything; the book behind the 'growth mindset'.
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10
Knowledge in Context
"This book explores the relationship between knowledge and context through a novel analysis of processes of representation. Sandra Jovchelovitch argues that it is through representation that we can ap